Daily Archives: 03/04/2010

Winston Churchill said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”

Now is that time.

Our elected officials must rise to face the challenge of the climate crisis. And we must demand that they do what is required before it is too late.

That’s what I wrote yesterday in the New York Times, and I need your help to make sure our Senators pass a strong climate bill this year.
Thank you for pledging to call your Senators. The first two days of our 72-hour calling campaign have been absolutely tremendous — together, we’ve made over 42,000 calls to the Senate, making this one of the largest call-in campaigns in the history of our movement.

TODAY is the LAST DAY, please call your Senators

The good news is we could be very close. A bipartisan group of Senators is drafting a bill right now that could be introduced within weeks — and critical negotiations over its content are taking place right now.

So starting Tuesday, a broad coalition of climate groups is launching a massive calling campaign to build grassroots pressure for the strongest bill possible. Will you join us by calling your Senator.

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable climate calamity. But the overwhelming scientific consensus remains unchanged. Every day we dump 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere, as if it were an open sewer.

There is still a narrow pathway to stopping catastrophic climate change — and it begins with a choice by the United States to pass a law establishing a clear cost for global warming pollution.

The House of Representatives has already passed comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation with bipartisan support. Now the Senate must follow suit, and the current effort may bring us closer than we’ve ever been.

To arrive at a strong bill, we must demand that our Senators take bold action on climate change. They need to know that we will support them if they do what is required.

The Washington Post just hired Marc Thiessen, who now becomes the second former George W. Bush speechwriter-turned-columnist at the paper. Thiessen isn’t just any right-wing shill: He’s an unapologetic advocate for torture. And he isn’t alone. Charles Krauthammer, Michael Scheuer, and Richard Cohen have all used the editorial pages of the Post to defend torture.

How much longer can the Post give writers its pages as a platform to promote torture before it starts to look like the paper’s official position?

When the Post gives a platform to torture supporters, it shapes — and distorts — the national debate on security and human rights, especially if those advocates are making a misleading case. The paper must stop promoting torture — and they need to hear that from you.

In his book and even on the pages of the Post, Thiessen has repeatedly made dishonest and dubious statements in support of torture. For example:

He falsely claimed in his most recent book that, since CIA interrogation of terror suspects began after 9-11, there were no attacks by Al Qaeda on U.S. interests at home or abroad.

He also claimed, falsely, in a Post op-ed that Bush oversaw “2,688 days without a terrorist attack on [American] soil,” ignoring the anthrax mail attacks, the El Al shooting in Los Angeles and other domestic terrorist attacks.

In a Post op-ed, he called President Obama’s decision to release Bush administration torture memos “irresponsible” and claimed that “Americans may die as a result.”

The Washington Post needs to be held accountable for the ethics of the writers it hires and features, especially on such a crucial issue. We need to let the Post know that giving a platform to dishonest advocates of torture is unacceptable. They must stop promoting torture.

In the Post, columnist Richard Cohen claimed that torture works and criticized the refusal to waterboard terrorists as naive, while columnist Krauthammer used his column to attack opponents of torture and promote Bush administration talking points.

But hiring Thiessen as a weekly columnist is a new low. Thiessen is not a reliable voice on national security, and the Post’s credibility will be hurt by Thiessen’s advocacy of inhumane and unnecessary torture techniques.

The Washington Post and editorial page editor Fred Hiatt need to say no to torture apologists, and stop promoting torture.